Must have Gadgets for Pro-Bloggers

Blogging has become one of the easiest ways to work from home and make money. Though along with all this, blogs need an investment, and it’s important to have essential Blogging tools and gadgets with you all the time to make most out of it.

Some years ago when blogging was initiated no one has ever thought at that time that one day it will be a business and people leave their jobs to continue with there blogging journey.

Many bloggers who started blogging as a part-time hobby have left their jobs, and now they are professional bloggers earning handsome amount of money. It’s the field that need constant study and information so that you will always stay one step ahead of your readers.

In order to stay informative and active blogger you need some extra things like gadgets to help you around so that you create something magical. So today we will discuss some of the awesome and essential gadgets for Blogger which is necessary for power blogging.

Essential Gadgets for Blogger:

The list starts from basic Laptop, netbook and goes till tablet. Listing all of them doesn’t mean you should be buying every thing, but at least keep these Bloggers tech gadgets in your mind, and once your blog starts showering you with money, you can buy them one by one.

Though everyone is not tech-savvy and some of them like to use the conventional way to blog like no video blogging, no blogging on the go and so on. It’s always a good idea to adapt and change with time and integrate the latest technology in your life.

It may take some time for you to get used to new technology and devices, but in some time you will realize how these Gadgets for professional bloggers, created a huge difference.

Laptop or Netbook.

Professional bloggers need to stay online 24/7 which means they need some thing portable so that they carry it along with them. Laptops or Netbooks are the solution to this problem.

You don’t need to buy an expensive laptop in order to start your blogging journey infect laptop with basic specifications is more than enough for you (unless your work need some heavy work like graphics, video processing etc).

Depending on your work, you can either opt for a 15″ or 17″ laptop or a small 10″ Netbook. If you are an Apple fan boy, Macbook Pro 13″ is always my ideal choice. Though, depending upon your budget you can grab one which fits your need.

Though, if you are a power blogger, my recommendation would be always opt for a laptop with latest processor and RAM should be at least 2GB.

I think that External hard-disk is the most important device after a laptop which every professional blogger should have. You might be thinking that there are lots of cloud services available on the internet which offer free storage space but remember your precious data is only one password away which means any hackers can easily hack your data or delete it.

Also, it’s better to have more than one backup so one should go for both options to keep your data safe. Also, as a safety measure, I would suggest always keep portable apps like Ultrasurf, Portable Anti-virus, Keepass and other essential softwares on your hard disk.

Well, how can we think of blogging without the Internet. If you have been blogging for a while, you must have encountered a bad internet day.

Having a good internet router like Belkin (Note: Belkin router are not so great with Apple products)or any other is a must. Along with it, a back-up internet service regarding the data card is also important.

If you are using iPhone or iPad, you can always use internet tethering services to share your internet connection. It’s better to go Wire-less for everything, instead of setting up an office with wire all around.

SmartPhone.

Although professional bloggers spend most of the time in the house or their office but still you need a communication device to communicate with your clients and sometime with your readers on the go.

It’s good to have your mobile number on your blog as it will leave a positive impression in the mind of your blog reader. You can also go for smart-phone if it fits your budget.

For professional blogger, having a Smart-phone with high-speed internet connection will create a big difference. For branding and socializing you can install smart phone apps like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Foursquare, Pinterest and many more.

More over, you can use smart-phones like iPhone or latest Android smartphone for great productivity. None the less, Siri on iPhone5 is something my target for now, as what could be better than having a personal free virtual assistant on your phone.

For freelancer’s, it’s always a good idea to have IM clients like Skype, Fring on your phone for a quick conversation with your client while on the move.

Blogging is a hectic job in which you have to sit whole day in front of your computer. My suggestion would be, use your travel time for reading work if possible.

I always, suggest to take a print out of long articles and keep it handy for reading while you are traveling. Also, having a printer is handy to print out invoices which you might need to give to your local advertisers, or it’s useful for day-to-day usage too.

Some times you have to upload an image or a piece of content from a newspaper or any magazine, for this, you need a scanner to take an image of your desire content and upload it your blog.

I also suggest you get a Fax which will be very handy at times. Though there are many online free Fax services, but a dedicated Fax machine will create a difference. I would recommend looking into new HP all in one printer models, which comes with great features and something every geek would like to own.

Digital Cam, Handycam & Mic

How many of you goes to attend Bloggers meet, Blogger events and launch programs of product related to your niche? As a blogger, it’s always a good idea to make most out of these events and click pictures and record videos of the event.

This is like creating free content for your social media profiles such as Facebook, Google+ and none the less YouTube. Especially, if you understand the importance of video Blogging, having a handy cam and voice recorder will be very useful.

Though, video recording on Laptop is easy with software like Camtasia and inbuilt mic, but for the offline event, the handy cam will create a big difference.

I also suggest you upload these videos to multiple video-sharing sites by using services like Oneload or anything similar. If you are new to Video blogging, FYI youtube offer revenue sharing program, which let you run AdSense ad unit on your videos. Something, which you can’t afford to lose. Learn more about YouTube partnership program.

Every professional blogger should also go for video tutorials and upload these tutorials to video sharing websites like YouTube, Vimeo or Metacafe, etc. in order to get extra traffic from these websites.

It’s better that you invest money on buying movie camera and not just buy an ordinary camera. But if you don’t have enough money than you can buy a simple Mic or Headphone with a mic. Also having a camera is very handy, you can always start taking your own images instead of finding images from Internet.

Tablet.

Now, this is an optional device, and if you have enough money to spare and want to buy an extra gadget which will boost your productivity, Tablet is for you. My preferred choice of tablet is Apple’s iPad Air, but Samsung galaxy could be a nice choice too.

Especially, if you like reading or hold a 17″ laptop which is not convenient for traveling, a tablet can bring a huge difference.

Especially, ideal for reading. There are many feed readers like Flipboard, Zite which makes the reading fun and you can stay updated with latest in technology. Also, you will find every social media site dedicated apps for Android an iOS tablet so that you can stay social while on the move.

I do my back-ups offline, hence I use an external hdd for this purpose. I just don’t trust cloud storage that much. I have an iPad but frankly speaking I rarely use it, I don’t even know why I bought it, it’s good for checking emails, updating social netwok accounts but not for blogging, I just hate typing on the touch screen, I rather use my old laptop for blogging.

I have recently bought a laptop now a high spec laptop but an everyday use laptop and I bought it mainly because I also want to take blogging as my career. Apart from this I also own a smartphone and I would love to buy a printer/scanner and an external hard drive. Thank you for the useful post 🙂